“I was going to ask you that,” said the colonel, coldly.
“Me? Ask me?”
“Yes, sir; you have come on board to buy slaves, I suppose, with the rest of us?”
“I deny it,” said my father, flashing out, as he drew himself up. “I came on board, too late it seems, to try and prevail upon my brother emigrants—English gentlemen of birth and position—to discountenance this hateful traffic in the bodies of our fellow-creatures.”
“We must have men to work if our colony is to succeed, Captain Bruton.”
“Oh!” ejaculated my father, and then in a low voice, as his eyes rested on the group of poor black wretches huddled together, I heard him say, “It is monstrous!”
At that moment a couple of sailors began to haul at the rope run through the block; it tightened, and with a cheery “Yo-ho!” they ran up what seemed to be the dead body of a big negro, whose head and arms hung down inert as he was hoisted on high; the spar to which the block was fastened swung round, the rope slackened, and the poor wretch plumped down on the deck, to lie motionless all of a heap.
“Not in very good fettle,” said the slave captain, curtly; “but he’ll come round.”
The rope was cast loose from the negro’s chest, lowered down again, and I gazed from the poor wretch lying half or quite dead on the deck, to my father, and back again, noting that he was very pale, biting his lower lip, and frowning in a way that I knew of old meant a storm.
“Now then, up with him!” shouted the captain.